About Us
We're a mother-daughter-founded, owned, and operated immersive splatter art studio based in Seattle.
One of our favorite moments is when people walk through our doors, their eyes widen, their smile grows, and they say, "The pictures don't do this place justice... it feels like home."
For a long time, Jules' work took us all over the United States. We lived in so many places, met incredible people, and saw firsthand how different communities came together to laugh, belong, and unknowingly ... heal from the shared company.
What they healed we'll never fully know. That story belongs to them. But their eyes always told us something meaningful had shifted.
Throughout all those moves, we dreamt about what it would be like to live in one place and build something together. We envisioned a café-like space filled with books, art, and delicious epic food - a space where people could just be themselves and breathe a little easier.
Oakley often wrote the narratives of our dreams on napkins from gas stations and fast-food joints. They lived in the glove box for years, quietly accumulating as the vision grew.
So, in many ways, we designed this space in our minds long before it existed - a place that felt like home not only to us, but to anyone who found their way here. A third place, if you will. One that holds stories, laughter, and familiarity.
In 2023, Wicked Rae's became that place.
Oakley Frankie Rae
Founder & Creative Director | Experience Designer
Oakley is a systems thinker in motion, designing experiences that align physical movement, emotional safety, and group dynamics. She leads the way she creates: with instinct, precision, and care for the people around her.
From a young age, Oakley understood that movement isn’t just physical — it’s emotional. Sports were her first language. Under the guidance of her basketball coach, she learned what it means to be seen under pressure. Not just to perform — but to be trusted.
As a team manager for three years, Oakley did more than track stats. She trained athletes. Sat in on one-on-ones. Helped teammates find their footing when confidence wavered or emotions overflowed.
She learned early that leadership isn’t loud.
It’s attentive.
Growing Through What Life Hands You
Oakley grew up alongside her mother through experiences that required resilience beyond her years — domestic violence, rebuilding, and the long work of creating safety again.
What she took from that time wasn’t fear — it was clarity. She learned how environments shape people. How chaos can either shut someone down — or set them free. How joy, when it’s real, is an act of strength.
She understands what it costs to start over.
And what it means to build something better.
Making Space for Others
Creativity was never theoretical for Oakley — it was relational. Oakley graduated high school at a young age and stepped fully into her role as a working artist, designer, and facilitator. Every workshop, demo, piñata, party — handmade and coordinated with care.
In the studio, Oakley is on the floor, in the paint, moving alongside kids (and adults) who need permission to take up space.
Some have asked her not to forget them. She won’t.
She designs sensory-based workshops that build neuroplasticity, resilience, creative confidence, and body awareness — where mess isn’t tolerated, it’s welcomed.
Oakley doesn’t just facilitate experiences.
She holds space — with warmth, clarity, and instinctive attunement.
Designing the Experience Itself
Now studying sports medicine, art, baking, and forensic psychology, Oakley designs every custom experience at Wicked Rae’s — from team workshops and private celebrations to field installations across Washington. She understands how bodies move. How energy shifts in groups. How trust forms through play.
If you’ve thrown paint with us — Oakley helped build that moment.
She was also the one who told her mom to go back to art.
Then she built the company alongside her.
Bones-Fish
Chief Morale Officer & Nervous System Regulator
Every studio needs a soul. Ours has four legs.
Bones is a 10-year-old English Foxhound - distinguished, gentle, and smarter than he lets on. He reads a room before anyone speaks.
Nervous kid walks in with tight shoulders? Bones finds them. They play. The shoulders drop.It happens every time.
One student came to Wicked Rae's weekly while going through chemo. For eight months, Bones laid his head in her lap during every painting class. She told us he was one of the reasons she beat her cancer. We believe her.
He reminds us that regulation doesn’t always need words.
Sometimes it needs a warm head in your lap and a reason to breathe again.
Jules McVey
Founder & CEO | Athletic Expressionism™ Pioneer
Jules learned early how to feel deeply — and how rare that is in a world that rewards numbing.
At 16, she walked away from scholarships to bet on herself. As an emancipated minor, she worked full-time while attending community college — bagging groceries at an organic market by day and searching for meaning by night.
It was there she discovered acting — not as performance, but as connection. She wrote a one-woman show. Performed it. Moved an entire classroom to tears.
Her professor gave her one note:
Stay with this. You move people to feel.
So she did.
She left college and moved to Los Angeles, working in real estate to survive while building a creative life in entertainment.
She illustrated for the History Channel and Discovery Channel. Did voiceover work. Acted on Roswell, Freaks & Geeks, Felicity, and the original 90210. She worked at the L.A. Connection Comedy Theatre and with MPH Entertainment. She fell in love with the invisible art of background work — how energy moves through a space, how emotion transfers without words.
She was learning how humans attune to one another.
The Moment Everything Changed
Then, at 18, Jules died.
Her car flipped ten times off the I-10 in West Covina. A stranger pulled her from the wreckage — and then disappeared. Paramedics brought her back. A firefighter stayed with her in the ER until her family arrived.
That moment rewired her understanding of humanity.
She left Hollywood that week.
What stayed with her wasn’t fear — it was presence.
The power of someone staying.
The way calm travels from one nervous system to another.
The way safety can exist even in chaos.
She decided to become that person for others.
Learning How Humans Survive
After healing from a fractured spine, Jules went back to school and into service. She studied aerospace engineering. Graduated from the fire academy.
Fire taught her what pressure really does to people.
Who freezes.
Who leads.
Who listens.
Who holds presence.
Later, epilepsy monitoring led her into neurology and sleep medicine.
She fell in love with the brain — with how the body processes stress, fear, rest, and recovery.
For over 20 years, Jules worked across hospitals, universities, private labs, and the VA system — serving as a clinical director, sleep manager, and systems builder for people running on empty.
At the same time, life kept happening.
Domestic violence.
Leaving.
Rebuilding.
Raising her daughter.
Starting over more than once.
And still — she kept moving forward.
She never stopped laughing.
Never stopped seeing beauty.
Never stopped noticing the sway of leaves in the wind, the small mercies, the quiet joys.
People who worked with her often said the same thing:
no matter what they were going through, she helped them laugh and breathe just by being in their life.
She completed her Master’s and Doctoral work in Psychology.
Her work became centered around one question:
How do humans stay human under pressure — and how do they come back to themselves?
From Holding Space to Creating It
In 2022, she was recruited by Meta into Learning & Development. In 2023, tech layoffs closed that chapter.
It was her daughter, Oakley, who said:
Go back to your first love.
Art.
Sports.
Psychology.
Neurology.
Together.
That permission changed everything.
Why Wicked Rae’s Exists
Jules has lived many lives: artist, performer, firefighter, clinician, psychologist, survivor. Every one of them shows up in the splatter room.
She spent 20 years helping people sleep. Now she wakes them up.
Her work today sits at the intersection of performance psychology, nervous system regulation, creative expression, and lived survival.
Athletic Expressionism™ exists because she has spent decades watching what happens when people are pushed — and learning what it takes to bring them back into themselves.
Want to Understand the Method Behind the Meaning?
Athletic Expressionism™ is the framework we use to design experiences that help humans regulate, reconnect, and recover through movement, play, and creative expression.